Former delinquent takes on Government and wins

The champion of prisoners' rights had an unlikely path
to High Court victory, writes Karen Kissane.

VICKIE Lee Roach was taken from her mother when she was two and
thinks of herself as a member of the stolen generation.

She is in jail because she left a young man with burns to 45 per
cent of his body after she smashed into his car while trying to
escape police. At the time, she had alcohol, four kinds of
tranquillisers, morphine and a cannabis-related substance in her
blood.

She is now not only educated but politically aware. Roach
yesterday won a landmark decision supporting Australians' right to
vote, when the High Court accepted her claim that the Federal
Government ban on prisoners voting at elections was
unconstitutional.

Roach was not chosen by activists to be a figurehead for the
push but initiated it herself, according to her solicitor, Philip
Lynch, of the Human Rights Law Resource Centre. "She chose us
rather than us choosing her. Vickie came to us through the prisoner
advocacy networks as a woman with an interest in and commitment to
human rights and freedoms and, in particular, her rights as a
prisoner."

Her criminal history is detailed in a judgement written by the
Victorian Court of Appeal in June 2005, which dismissed her
application to have her sentence  six years with a non-parole
period of four  reduced.

According to that document, she was raised by foster parents
and, after leaving them, became "delinquent" and addicted to drugs.
Between 1976 and 2003, she had 125 convictions or findings of guilt
from 23 court appearances. She formed a series of damaging
relationships with men and at the time of the accident was with a
man who was violent towards her.

The offences that led to her jailing occurred on December 14,
2002. Roach and her then partner were disturbed robbing a
Mordialloc milk bar at 3.45am. They stashed stolen goods in the
boot of her partner's car and fled, with Roach as driver, at speeds
of up to 130 km/h. Neither was licensed. Roach later said that she
had wanted to pull over as soon as she saw police in pursuit but
did not do so because the man with her threatened to kill her. He
kept urging her to drive faster.

She struck a stationary car at traffic lights and both cars
burst into flames. The 21-year-old man in the other car was burned
on his scalp, face, ears, back, arms, knees and internally to his
airway. He needed several operations, extensive skin grafts and the
insertion of wires in his fingers. "He has been scarred externally
and emotionally for life," wrote Victorian justices Ormiston,
Charles and Callway.

Roach is now 49. She has completed a master's degree in
professional writing and is studying for a PhD in creative writing
while living at the Dame Phyllis Frost women's prison. She has
written poetry and a novel and is a "peer educator" at the jail.
"She is a woman of great courage, integrity and intellect," Mr
Lynch said.

Victoria does not permit prisoners to speak to the media but,
through her lawyer, Roach said yesterday: "This case stands for the
principle that Aboriginal people and prisoners are human beings,
and that they don't lose their humanity by reason of their
imprisonment, and that they should not be excluded from the
community or denied the ability to have their say."

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